Looks like the future is coming to the P&LE McKees Rocks site... hard to tell if any preservation is in the plan, but they do expect to have live rail access. No word on the little steam kettle that was stored there. ;-)

Rob

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11172/1155102-28.stm

If the "little steam kettle" to which you refer is B&LE 2-10-4 643, it's not involved, as it's stored across Nichols Ave. from the yard and on other property. Most of the P&LE McKees Rocks yard and shop complex was on the south side of the mainline--which trackage is still in use by CSX. Such buildings as remain there aren't much to write home about, but when covered with enough money, they might be usable. I am quite amused by a report heard on local media that states that "1172 new jobs will be created by this project." It should be educational to look back, say 5 years from now, and see what really happened there. There is obviously some magic formula for job creation that links acreage and money spent to the expected results.

The bureaucracy--and occasional "smoke and mirrors"--involved in such number-crunching is nothing short of mind-boggling. Whenever Pennsylvania issues a new set of rail freight grants, used to help support, as an example, the construction of a siding for a new or relocating or expanding industry, the reports always indicate how many jobs will be created or retained by the project, even when it's as little as one or two jobs. (I've jokingly said that as long as they're going that far, just go ahead and tell us the names of the guys in question!)

And, yes, be skeptical. Anyone remember the B&O Museum moving a C&O Allegheny into a shopping center near the B&O Museum that was part of a Baltimore "urban revitalization" program in the late 1980s? The hallway in which that loco stood has been vacant for years, and the center lost its last major tenant, a supermarket, a year or so ago; save for a new major-bank-chain branch, a "dollar store," and a Subway and fried chicken outlet, the entire complex has been vacant and "failed" for about a decade or more.